This invention relates generally to gear inspection, and more specifically to methods and systems for computing gear modifications from a gear inspection chart.
Gears assembled for gearboxes are inspected prior to being installed in a gearbox. Generally, the gears are inspected to facilitate reducing the likelihood and amount of noise and vibration within the gearbox during operation. Specifically, to ensure a proper amount of contact between mating gears, the gears are typically modified to deviate from an ideal involute gear profile. More specifically, known gears are often modified within an upper control limit and a lower control limit to improve the contact area defined between adjacent gears. Adjusting the contact area between mating gears facilitates reducing noise and vibration during gearbox operation. Accordingly, the gear modifications generally facilitate improving a life-span of the gears and/or reducing gear maintenance. As such, during the inspection process, gear profiles that exceed either an upper control limit or a lower control limit are generally determined to be unusable within the gearbox.
At least one known method of inspecting a gear is to use a K-chart. A distinct K-chart exists for each type of gear manufactured. The K-chart provides an upper control limit and a lower control limit that corresponds to the type of gear. Typically, a K-chart is overlaid on the gear profile such that the gear profile may be analyzed with respect to the K-chart. The gear profile is then manually inspected to ensure that the profile falls within the upper and lower control limits of the K-chart. However, manual inspection using a K-chart may be both time consuming and subject to inspector errors. Furthermore, known K-chart inspections do not provide a quantified analysis of gear profile deviations. As such, although the K-chart is useful in verifying conformity between the gear profile and the modification limits, known K-chart inspections do not provide a quantified assessment that may be used to correct gear modifications during manufacturing. The lack of a quantitative gear profile assessment may limit an analysis of probable noise and vibration during gearbox operation.